NFL REPORT.

Wannstedt Backs Spellman's Return

September 05, 1999|By Don Pierson.

DEFENSIVE TACKLE NOW A STARTER WITH COWBOYS

Alonzo Spellman is starting at defensive right tackle for the Dallas Cowboys and he has Dave Wannstedt to thank. Spellman and Wannstedt clashed in Chicago before Spellman's emotional problems kept him out of football last season.

When the Cowboys were looking for somebody to replace suspended Leon Lett, Dallas owner Jerry Jones called Wannstedt for a recommendation.

"Dave told Jerry he would like to see the guy get an opportunity," Cowboys public relations chief Rich Dalrymple said. "Dave called here the other day to see how he was doing."

Wannstedt and Miami coach Jimmy Johnson never have shied away from controversial players. When they coached together in Dallas, they won the Super Bowl the year they picked up Charles Haley after he had worn out his welcome in San Francisco.

Now Johnson and Wannstedt have Dimitrious Underwood, the reluctant No. 1 draft choice of the Minnesota Vikings who walked away from a $1.75 million signing bonus only to surface in Miami.

Underwood suffered a separated shoulder Thursday night against Green Bay in a game played about 48 hours after he arrived in Miami. He wasn't supposed to play, but he did, and the injury could end up fulfilling Johnson's original plan.

"You've got to understand our motive here," Johnson said after luring Underwood. "Our whole thought process here was to get an outstanding talent for the future. I said from Day One it would have been fine with me if he had reported next year. We made this claim because we feel like he's going to want to play football eventually. We just didn't know when."

Underwood tried to explain how he could give up a $1.75 million signing bonus: "That matter kind of already got closure to it. That's just digging back in the coffin. Some things change over time. You can't explain them. That's like trying to explain God. It's like trying to explain Einstein's theory of relativity."

Here's a more believable explanation: According to a Vikings player, his new teammates were so fed up with Underwood's lackadaisical attitude during off-season workouts between the draft and training camp that on the first day of camp, one of them threatened to kill him. Underwood quickly decided to get out of town alive. Poor, but alive.

Tampa Bay's Warren Sapp said he questioned Underwood's intelligence because he didn't at least "stick around and get cut so he could keep the money." Maybe he's smarter than he seems.

"Miami--that's what I was waiting on," said Brister, who did not throw a touchdown pass in his four preseason games. "I was dealing with everything and putting up with and hoping and knowing--not hoping, knowing--that I was going to get the opening day start against Miami. If we beat them on Monday night, who gives a . . . what happened in Dallas? Who cares? Nobody cares in the first group (offense). That was the feeling I was getting.

"And I don't know that everybody was into it 100 percent. It's the two-time Super Bowl champs playing on turf in Dallas and Wisconsin. Do you think the (starters) really care? Now the second and third units, they're fighting for a job and trying to get a look and it's a completely different deal. (The first team) was waiting on the regular season, and I was waiting to run with the ponies in the regular season."

Quarterback quandaries: Dick Jauron's decision to play both Shane Matthews and Cade McNown recalls the 1974 Pittsburgh Steelers season when Terry Bradshaw started only seven of the 14 regular-season games. It was a strike year when they played the exhibition games with rookies and Joe Gilliam was so effective throwing to a pair of rookies named Lynn Swann and John Stallworth that coach Chuck Noll went with him the first six games. He was 4-1-1 before Noll went back to Bradshaw, although Bradshaw was benched for a game in Cleveland for Terry Hanratty. By the way, the Steelers won their first Super Bowl that season.

On drug policy: Miami defensive end Trace Armstrong, president of the NFL Players Association, objects to the notion that the union kept 16 players from drug suspensions during 1995 negotiations for the new collective bargaining agreement.

"Yeah, they tested positive and they would have faced penalties, but that was under the old drug policy that the league had unilaterally implemented," Armstrong said. "We said, `O.K., if we agree to the new plan, everybody would be rolled over to the new plan.' Nobody got passes. All those guys went through treatment and evaluation and testing and all that stuff."

Only six of the 16 eventually were suspended, as they would have been under the old policy. But Armstrong believes suspension alone hardly qualifies as the best policy.

"The new policy is much more treatment-based," he said. "The drug policy of the past was if a guy had a problem and got caught a couple times, the league was finished with him.

"Now the doctor makes the final decision. If a guy has a lot of trouble and he comes up with a positive and people say he should be kicked out of the league, they don't realize that for over a year of almost weekly drug testing he didn't have positives. He's going to group counseling once a week. He's seeing a doctor. People don't realize how hard a guy actually works through this treatment program. He has to comply with all that."

As for the videotaped 1995 union meeting that revealed infighting and heated discussion, Armstrong said: "Anybody that watches C-Span will notice democracy is not always a pretty process."